Ubuntu Women Blog

First of all huge thanks to everyone who submitted entries to the Ubuntu Women Month of Making, in spite of getting off to a slow start we ended up with six really amazing entries and we had several voters comment that they had trouble picking just one to vote for.

Secondly, thanks to everyone who voted!

And finally – the two winners of the Ubuntu User Magazine subscription courtesy of Linux New Media (parent Company to Ubuntu User Magazine):

Stefanie Lück: http://blog.ubuntu-women.org/2011/10/ubuntu-women-month-of-making-stefanie-luck/

Maile Urbancic: http://blog.ubuntu-women.org/2011/10/ubuntu-women-month-of-making-maile-urbancic/

All six of the women who submitted entries will receive a free ebook from O’Reilly Media. I’ll send out details on how to claim your prize soon.

When the Ubuntu Women project launched our Month of Making in honor of Ada Lovelace Day on October 7th we decided to take a very broad approach to “Make” and were excited to learn what women in the Ubuntu community would submit.

We’ve had amazing submissions and have been publishing throughout the past few weeks. As a wrap-up, here are all of them (and an opportunity to vote on your favorite at the end of this post!).

Silvia Bindelli

Our first submission came from Silvia Bindelli who wrote about the collaboration she “Made” between Geek Girl Dinners in Milan and the Italian segment of the Ubuntu Women project which led to getting a monthly article in Geek Girl Life Magazine.

More about Silvia’s project can be found here: http://blog.ubuntu-women.org/2011/09/ubuntu-women-month-of-making-silvia-bindelli/

Nathalina Backman

Our second submission came from Nathalina Backman whose Ubuntu Cupcakes have now been featured on sites from thecupcakeblog.org to NetworkWorld.

More about Nathalina’s project can be found here: http://blog.ubuntu-women.org/2011/09/ubuntu-women-month-of-making-nathalina-backman/

Akkana Peck

Our third submission came from Akkana Peck who used Ubuntu as a base operating system for her Arduino-based sonar echolocation rig and provides instructions for Command-line Arduino development in Debian and Ubuntu.

More about Akkana’s project can be found here: http://blog.ubuntu-women.org/2011/10/ubuntu-women-month-of-making-akkana-peck/

Flavia Weisghizzi

Our fourth submission came from Flavia Weisghizzi, an Italian Community LoCo Council Member and spokeswoman for the Italian Ubuntu community. She “Makes” books! Flavia has written two books about Ubuntu (in collaboration with Luca Ferretti) the first about Ubuntu 9.10 and the second about Ubuntu 10.10, and the third one is in progress. These books have been very successful, selling over 10,000 copies and giving her opportunities through reviews on various mediums to present at Universities, tech fairs and more.

More about Flavia’s project can be found here: http://blog.ubuntu-women.org/2011/10/ubuntu-women-month-of-making-flavia-weisghizzi/

Stefanie Lück

Our fifth submission came from Stefanie Lück. Stefanie is a technical assistant in a plant researcher lab in Germany. Starting with small programs for personal use, she quickly began writing Python programs on her Ubuntu desktop she wrote an annotation tool, a kind of image browser, which allows the user to scroll easily over many pictures and annotate them. Her work on this project and others lead her to be invited to give a talk at PyConDE (the first Python conference in Germany!).

More about Stefanie’s project can be found here: http://blog.ubuntu-women.org/2011/10/ubuntu-women-month-of-making-stefanie-luck/

Maile Urbancic

Finally, our sixth submission came from Maile Urbancic who founded BoutiqueAcademia.com, a small business that carries STEM-themed jewelry and accessories. She contacted Canonical in early 2011 with a proposal to create Ubuntu Earrings, proceeds of which support the non-profit Partimus.org, which she is a co-founder of and works to put Ubuntu and other Free Software powered desktops into public schools.

More about Maile’s project can be found here: http://blog.ubuntu-women.org/2011/10/ubuntu-women-month-of-making-maile-urbancic/

All these projects are amazing, and O’Reilly has offered to give all our winners a free e-book for participating!

We also have two subscriptions to Ubuntu User Magazine courtesy of Linux New Media (Parent Company to Ubuntu User Magazine).

This is where you come in! Which is your favorite project?

Vote now: http://mumble.libertus.co.uk/limesurvey/index.php?sid=84617&lang=en

If you have any trouble voting, please contact lyz@ubuntu.com with comments, questions or votes

Hello! My name is Maile Urbancic, and I made Ubuntu earrings.

Last year I founded BoutiqueAcademia.com, a small business that carries STEM-themed jewelry and accessories. There is great beauty to be found in math, science, technology, and other deep intellectual disciplines, and I think it is fun to take these aesthetic elements and create wearable art. I find it particularly delicious when it involves a symbol of academic, professional, or intellectual achievement. Being a geek-from-birth myself, the idea of strong, clever women wearing academic jewelry has a sort of liberated-from-conventional-fashion feminist flavor to me.

In any case, I have been using Ubuntu for a while, and the “Circle of Friends” element of the Ubuntu logo seemed perfect for earrings as a symbol of women in open source. A while ago I co-founded a nonprofit organization, Partimus (see partimus.org), that now builds and maintains computer labs in public schools in the Bay Area. The computers are all repurposed, using Ubuntu and other free software. I hadn’t been able to contribute to the Partimus work lately, so I hoped that the Ubuntu earrings might also serve as a fundraiser, with a portion of each sale going to them.

I wrote to Canonical and asked permission to manufacture the earrings. Here is an excerpt:

This project would have two main benefits:

1 – Children using Ubuntu would benefit from the funding. The Partimus staff volunteer their time, which means that all donations go directly to supporting the Partimus vision of maintaining and expanding computer labs running Ubuntu in low-income schools.

2 – Wearing logos and icons gives people a sense of belonging, of having a place in a community…The existance of Ubuntu themed earrings would be one more subtle indication that women have an undeniable place within the Ubuntu community.

Happily, Canonical gave their blessing, and the Ubuntu Earrings became a reality: boutiqueacademia.com/products/Ubuntu-Earrings.html. $6 from the sale of each pair goes to Partimus. The earrings have shipped all over the world, and have been blogged about in English, Russian, Spanish, Hungarian, Danish, and Japanese.

It makes me really happy to know that women all over the world are wearing these. I’ve read (with the help of Google translate and bilingual friends) some of the comments on the blogs. My favorites were the ones by women who were excited that there was an Ubuntu item made specifically for them. But I also enjoyed the skeptical ones that said there weren’t any women in open source. Those comments made me chuckle…because I knew they were wrong.

Thanks to Maile for being our sixth participant in the Ubuntu Women Month of Making! Please visit the wiki page or read the announcement for more information about this competition. We have now reached our October 14th deadline, thanks for everyone who has participated!

My name is Stefanie. For nine years, I’ve worked as a technical assistant in a plant researcher lab in Germany. About three years ago, I started to learn Python (under Windows). Just for fun because I was bored. I wrote some small scripts for my private stuff and also some small tools for my work. I realized more and more how convenient it is, to know a programming language. Then, I started to write serious applications for my daily jobs. The programs are quite simple, but make my (and others) life much easier because there are customized for our tasks. Quite fast I decided to try out a Linux distribution. I tried few, but after I used Ubuntu, I immediately fell in love.

Ubuntu looks pretty and smart! Ubuntu is easy to use! Ubuntu gives me freedom! Ubuntu just works! Ubuntu comes with Python! Python rocks! Ubuntu is for free! Ubuntu is simply cool I switched completely to Ubuntu.

A few months ago I followed a discussion on the PyConDE (the first Python conference in Germany!) mailing list about the lack of women’s speakers at the coming conference. I offered them to give a talk about finding duplicate microscope images with Python. They accepted my talk (well, they didn’t have a big choice) and two days ago I spoke about my project. The conference was really great. I got a lot of feedback (incredible!) and had great discussions after (actually I was unable to eat anything during the breaks). I would like to show some of my tools, which are written in Python under Ubuntu. I’m doing this only for fun, it has become my passion. I hope that more and more women try out programming and Ubuntu. It’s really great! It’s even better than Latte Macchiato or shoes

The first story is about what I presented at the conference:

We are working with barley. Barley has an enemy. Mildew, powdery mildew. We’re studying barley – powdery mildew interactions. Therefore, we’re looking at microscopical images (Picture 1) which show green cells and inside a fungal structure, so-called haustoria.

Picture 1: A barley epidermis cell, inside a haustoria.

Our automated system takes pictures automatically to store and analyze them. From time to time, we have to control the robots and therefore to look at the images again. In Python I wrote an annotation tool (Picture 2), a kind of image browser, which allows the user to scroll easily over many pictures and annotate them.

Picture 2: Annotation tool written in Python under Ubuntu.

The annotation data are stored in a database and can be exported as table files (e.g. LibreOffice calc). The slides of my presentation (unfortunately in German) could be found here:

http://speakerdeck.com/u/snowflake_ete/p/stefanie-luck

My other tools are mostly about DNA sequences (http://labtools.ipk-gatersleben.de/), e.g. sequence alignment, sequence parsing, sequence creation and finding RNAi off-targets effects (Pictures 3 and 4).

Picture 3: si-Fi, a Software for RNAi (RNA interference) off-target prediction.

Picture 4: Blaster, a Software for sequence alignments.

I won’t go to much in details, please check out the links if you want to know more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence_alignment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_interference

My only wishes for Ubuntu are to have or help creating a womanlike Ubuntu Theme. I think and hope that this will attract more women. Otherwise Ubuntu is perfect for modern girls like us

Thanks to Stefanie for being our fifth participant in the Ubuntu Women Month of Making! Please visit the wiki page or read the announcement for more information about this competition. Entries are to be sent to competition at ubuntu-women.org and the deadline is October 7th extended to October 14th!

Hi! I’m Flavia, Deindre on Forum and IRC. I’m part of Italian Community LoCo Council and I founded with Silvia Bindelli (Dolasilla) the Italian branch of Ubuntu Women project.

I’m the spokeswomen of Italian Community, and I take care of media relations. I’m a Ubuntu evangelist too, of course but the thing I’ve done and about I’m very proud is… my book!

Or better I should say my books, because I wrote two books about Ubuntu (in collaboration with Luca Ferretti) the first about Ubuntu 9.10 and the second about Ubuntu 10.10, and the third one is in progress (and this is a spoiler)!

I’m very proud about it because the second one has been published by the biggest tech- publisher in Italy, Mondadori Informatica, the same one that published Mako Hill’s Official Ubuntu Guide in Italy.

This book has been a great success, and has been sold in bookshop and newspaper kiosks, in an amount of more then 10.000 copies (in Italy a book that sold 2.000 copies is considered a great success) reaching every level of public, from the specialist to the simple curious.

Moreover this book gave me the opportunity to be present to many tech fairs, as SMAU, the most important tech fair in Italy, both in Rome and Milan, where I talked about Ubuntu to business public; but I presented this book in many Universities, in Rome, Siena, Padova ecc and events, where I meet young students and people interested in free software.

Then I’m very proud because many newspapers, magazines and some radios and TV broadcast too reviewed this book or asked me to talk about it and about Ubuntu, and I’m sure I’ve touched people who never had heard about FLOSS before.

I’m very happy about it, and I hope to continue my evengelism again!

Thanks for your attention and for your inspiration!

Thanks to Flavia for being our fourth participant in the Ubuntu Women Month of Making! Please visit the wiki page or read the announcement for more information about this competition. Entries are to be sent to competition at ubuntu-women.org and the deadline is October 7th extended to October 14th!

We have extended the submission date for the Ubuntu Women Month of Making till next Friday, October 14, 2011.

Miss the original announcement? The Ubuntu Women Month of Making is a competition to showcase fantastic created by women that are tied to and have roots in the wonderful world of Ubuntu. This competition also honors Ada Lovelace Day — a day to celebrate women in science, technology, engineering, and math (October 7, 2011).

The goal for this competition is for women to inspire other women by showcasing the work they contribute in, near or around Ubuntu.

By submitting a project you’ll be helping the Ubuntu Women team to encourage other women within the community!

With this extension, the Ubuntu Women Project Team would like to encourage more of its members and friends to showcase their Ubuntu related projects.

To enter, write about what you have done (with pictures) and email your entry to: competition at ubuntu-women.org and we’ll then share your entry on the Ubuntu Women team blog.

For more information on this competition please see the original announcement or visit our wiki.

Akkana Peck has submitted her Arduino-based sonar echolocation rig:

Sonar / Echolocation with an Arduino

http://shallowsky.com/blog/hardware/sonarduino.html

It’s developed on Ubuntu, using Ubuntu/Debian packages I documented here:

Command-line Arduino development: http://shallowsky.com/software/arduino/arduino-cmdline.html

Thanks to Akkana for being our third participant in the Ubuntu Women Month of Making! Please visit the wiki page or read the announcement for more information about this competition. Entries are to be sent to competition at ubuntu-women.org and the deadline is October 7th extended to October 14th!

On September 7th Jessica Ledbetter announced the Ubuntu Women Month of Making. We’re now down to just 9 days to get your submissions in before we hit the October 7th Ada Lovelace Day deadline!

Thanks to Valorie Zimmerman and Amber Graner getting in contact with some sponsors we now have prizes lined up for this competition!

• Your choice of an O’Reilly ebook (multiple available)

• A complimentary subscription to Ubuntu User Magazine. Winners may choose between a digital or print subscription. (2 available)

Full rules and details on how to submit are available here: http://wiki.ubuntu-women.org/Events/Competitions/AdaLovelace

I made these cupcakes as an inside joke for a friend who kept talking about Ubuntu.

They are caramel flavoured to give that Ubuntu brown feel.

Thanks to Nathalina for being our second participant in the Ubuntu Women Month of Making! Please visit the wiki page or read the announcement for more information about this competition. Entries are to be sent to competition at ubuntu-women.org and the deadline is October 7th.

I’m Silvia (aka Dolasilla). I’m part of the Ubuntu Italian team and together with Flavia Weisghizzi I gave birth to the Italian section of Ubuntu Women. But it’s not about this that I’m going to tell you. It’s about the collaboration I started with the GirlGeekDinner Italian team, particulary with the Milan team.

Girl Geek Dinners are dinners dedicated to women passionate for technology, in its broader meaning. The teams organizing these dinners in cities around the world are groups of women that in their free time organize events for women sharing the same passion for technology. Each event has a different theme, women experienced in the field give talks and share their knowledge.

The Milan Girl Geek Dinner Team, which I met during one of these dinners, also manages a national (Italian) web magazine: Girl Geek Life. In this magazine articles are written by women for women, and each article has a content related to technology.

Thanks to the collaboration I started with them, Ubuntu has a monthly article on this magazine. Every month (almost!) one of the girls of the UbuntuWomen-it team writes about a theme related to Ubuntu, in the form of a miniguide. I wrote one of the first articles, but of course I get more satisfaction in seeing the articles written by other women sharing the passion for Ubuntu! The page about this project is hosted on the wiki of Ubuntu-it:

http://wiki.ubuntu-it.org/GruppoPromozione/UbuntuWomen/ProgettoGuideGirlGeekLife

Huge thanks to Silvia for being our first participant in the Ubuntu Women Month of Making! Please visit the wiki page or read the announcement for more information about this competition. Entries are to be sent to competition at ubuntu-women.org and the deadline is October 7th.